Arcadia. Sir Philip Sidney
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so much as to make him any answer. I continued my inner discourses, but he—perchance witness of his own unworthiness and therefore more apt to think himself slighted—took it in so heinous a manner that he stood on his tiptoes and stared as if he would have had a mote pulled out of his eye.
“ ‘Why,’ said he, ‘thou woman, or boy—or both, whatever thou be, I tell thee here is no place for thee. Get thee gone! I tell thee it is the prince’s pleasure! I tell thee it is Dametas’ pleasure!’
“I could not choose but to smile at him, seeing him look so like an ape that had newly taken a purgation, yet pretending I had been caught, I spoke these words to myself:
“ ‘O spirit,’ said I, ‘of mine, how canst thou receive any mirth in the midst of thy agonies? And thou mirth, how darest thou enter into a mind grown of late thy professed enemy?’
“ ‘Thy spirit?’ said Dametas. ‘Dost thou think me a spirit? I tell thee I am Basilius’ officer and have charge of him and his daughters.’
“ ‘O only pearl!’ said I, sobbing, ‘that so vile an oyster should keep thee.’
“ ‘By the comb case of Diana,’ swore Dametas, ‘this woman is mad. Oysters and pearls? Dost thou think I will buy oysters? I tell thee once again, get thee packing,’ and with that he lifted up his bill to hit me with the blunt end of it.
“Indeed, that put me quite out of my lesson, so that I forgot Zelmane-ship. I drew out my sword, but the baseness of the villain (who, as Kalander told me, had since his childhood feared the blade of a sword) made me stay my hand. He ran backward with his hands above his head at least twenty paces, gaping and staring with the very grace, I think, of the clowns that by Latona’s prayers were turned into frogs.
“At length staying, finding himself beyond the compass of my blows, he fell to a fresh scolding in such a mannerly15 manner as might well show he had passed through the discipline of a tavern. But seeing me walk up and down without marking what he said, he went his way (as I perceived after) to Basilius.
“For within a while Basilius came to me, bearing indeed the appearance in his countenance of an honest and well-minded gentleman. With as much courtesy as Dametas showed rudeness, he saluted me:
“ ‘Fair lady,’ said he, ‘it is nothing strange that such a solitary place as this should receive solitary persons, but much do I marvel how such beauty as yours should be permitted to be thus alone.’
“I (that now knew it was my part to play) looked with a grave majesty upon him, as if I found in myself cause to be reverenced:
“ ‘Those who are accompanied by noble thoughts,’ said I, ‘are never alone.’
“ ‘But in this, your loneliness,’ replied Basilius, ‘those thoughts can neither protect you from suspicion in others nor defend you from melancholy in yourself.’
“I then showed a dislike that he pressed me so far: ‘I seek no better warrant,’ said I, ‘than my own conscience, nor any greater pleasure than my own contentment.’
“ ‘Yet virtue seeks to satisfy others,’ said Basilius.
“ ‘Those that are good,’ said I, ‘will be satisfied as long as they see no evil.’
“ ‘Yet will the best in this country,’ said Basilius, ‘suspect so excellent a beauty, being so weakly guarded.’
“ ‘Then are the best but stark naught,’16 answered I, ‘for openly suspecting others comes of secretly condemning themselves. But in my country—whose manners I am in all places to maintain and reverence—the general goodness nourished in our hearts makes everyone think others also have the strength of virtue of which we find the assured foundation in ourselves.’
“ ‘Excellent lady,’ he said, ‘you praise so greatly—and yet so wisely— your country, that I must needs desire to know what the nest is out of which such birds do fly.’
“ ‘You must first deserve it,’ said I, ‘before you may obtain it.’
“ ‘And by what means,’ said Basilius, ‘shall I deserve to know your estate?’
“ ‘By letting me first know yours,’ answered I.
“ ‘To obey you,’ said he, ‘I will do it, although there is much more reason yours should be known first, since in all points you deserve to be put first. Know you, fair lady, that my name is Basilius, unworthily lord of this country. The rest, either fame has already brought to your ears, or—if it please you to make this place happy by your presence—at more leisure you shall understand from me.’
“I had from the beginning assured myself it was he, but would not seem I did so. To keep my gravity the better, I made a piece of reverence unto him,17
“ ‘Mighty prince,’ said I, ‘let my not-knowing you serve for the excuse of my boldness, and impute the little reverence I do you to the manner of my country, the invincible land of the Amazons. I am niece to Senicia, queen thereof, lineally descended from the famous Penthesilea, slain by the bloody hand of Pyrrhus. Having in this my youth determined to make the world see the Amazons’ excellencies—as well in private as in public virtue—I passed some dangerous adventures in diverse countries, till the unmerciful sea deprived me of my companions. Shipwreck cast me not far hence; uncertain wandering brought me to this place.’
“But Basilius—who now began to taste of that which he has since swallowed up, as I will tell you—fell to more cunning entreating about my abode than any greedy innkeeper would use to well-paying travelers.
“I thought nothing could shoot righter at the mark of my desires, yet had I learned already so much: that it was against my womanhood to be forward in my own wishes. And therefore he—to prove whether intercessions in fitter mouths might better prevail—commanded Dametas to bring forthwith his wife and daughters thither, three ladies, all of differing yet excellent beauty.
“His wife wore grave matron-like attire, with countenance and gesture suitable, and was of such fairness—being in the strength of her age—that if her daughters had not been by, she might with just price have purchased admiration. But they being there, it was enough that the most dainty eye would think her a worthy mother of such children.
“Fair Pamela’s noble heart, I find, greatly disdains that the trust of her virtue is reposed in such a lout’s hands as Dametas. Nevertheless, to show obedience, she had taken on shepherdish apparel, which was but of russet-cloth cut after their fashion: with a straight body, open breasted, the nether part full of pleats, and with long and wide sleeves. But believe me, she appareled her apparel and with the preciousness of her body made it most sumptuous. Her hair, at the full length, was wound about with gold lace, only by the comparison to show how far her hair excels gold in color. Between her breasts—which sweetly rose up like two fair little mountains in the pleasant vale of Tempe—there hung a very rich diamond set but in black horn. The motto inscribed on it, I have since read, is this: ‘Yet still myself.’
“And thus particularly I have described Gynecia and Pamela so that you may know that my eyes are not so partial but that I marked them too. But then the ornament of the earth, the model of heaven, the triumph of nature, the life of beauty, the queen of love—young Philoclea—appeared in her nymph-like apparel, so near nakedness as one might well discern part of her perfection, and yet so appareled, as she kept the best store of her beauty to herself.
“Her hair (alas, too poor a word, why should I not rather call them her beams?) was drawn up into a net able to have caught Jupiter when he was in the form of an eagle. Her body (O sweet body) was covered with a light taffeta garment, so cut as the wrought smock came through it in places enough to have made even your restrained imagination have thought what was under it. Her eyes were black indeed, whether nature so made them that we might be the more able to behold and bear their wonderful shining or that she (goddess-like) would work